‘Volcanic temper… suspicious of everyone… irritability, mood swings… terror stalking the shadows… devastating collapse of Europe’s economy… rampant insecurity, unbridled hypochondria…’ Trump? No, it’s Henry VIII, according to Robert Hutchinson. But the ‘king’ across the water is uncannily like the Tudor tyrant; the discarded wives, the wenching, the rival heirs, the fawning, the flattery, the broken treaties. Palm Beach is his jousting ground; Mar-a-Lago his gaudier Nonsuch.
As I was writing a review of the very wordy Dressed: The Secret Life of Clothes by Shahidha Bari, who believes that every stitch we put on has some deep inner meaning, up she pops on a radio programme to say that fashion has never been as diversified as now. What? Has she not looked around? Though the denim tide is gradually receding, its ubiquity has been replaced by every male, even the more mature, shuffling about in sloppy shorts: the young live in trackies, and all women wear trainers.
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